Friday the 13th Part 8 : Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Our reviews of the Jason films have been a bit cruel so far, we have enjoyed ourselves though regardless.

In 1989 (the year both me and Anna were born) Jason left his normal home of Camp Crystal Lake and found himself taking a boat cruise to Manhattan.

One of the least liked films, it has been critically panned. Right now we all kind of feel like what else could go wrong?

The whole concept is a bit weird though but I appreciate the fact they tried something a bit different. I mean I was starting to wonder just how much longer they could possibly make me believe that people would keep returning to a area full of death. Rename it all you want but people were always going to realise where they were.

Everything about it was just crazy from beginning to end. The fact that it was mainly on a boat, the fact that it was then a chase around crowded streets with Jason only stalking the boat survivors… Everything about it was just extremely odd.

At least Jason’s body count went up though right?

Like the last few they try to make it more about the characters then about the mindless violence having one girl being aquaphobic and having repressed memories of her uncle (who just so happens to be one of the teachers on the boat) and Jason. You have to question if there was more of a point to this other then the stupid need to have new adventures for Jason that only a big city could solve. Even the ending was pointless with him seemingly just being killed by toxic waste in the sewer.

The acting was terrible and if there was a attempt at adding story to it then it went right over my head. There was nothing really new or interesting about it and everything from the terribly dramatic ripping out of a pipe from a guys stomach, or was it meant to be innards? to the awful death of Jason was just a waste of time having to watch.

Now as I said we haven’t had much nice to say about the Friday Franchise and there hasn’t been much to actually review since the first outing seeing that they follow the exact same formula mostly, have very little story to talk about and any attempts to beef it up has just made the whole thing hilariously awkward and awful. The shambling evil entity that Freddy vs Jason, Jason X and the new re-make seems to have solidified into younger people’s minds (like mine) has never come to fruition and for one of the most iconic Slasher monsters he’s also seemingly the one that, OK for reasons has a high body count, but actually isn’t the main focus of a few of the movies.

The original was interesting because of the twist of it being his mother and not him at the end, the second, whilst not a great movie, at least attempted to add a little bit of gravity to the situation by having him be alive and witnessing his mothers death. Since then? Since then its gotten hard to even piece together what is really important and what is just a bunch of bullshit.

Jason Takes Manhattan is more like a slap in the face. I mean they haven’t been great films up until this point but Part 8 just kind of is there. Its a terrible film full stop. It would be terrible no matter who was the person behind the murders but it really was the point where you’d think someone would realise that they were going nowhere with this franchise.

Yet somehow, even though this was one of the worst performing and worst reviewed it still managed to spawn ANOTHER sequel. How and why I do not know but it did.

So for all the joking and everything else ANYTHING that came before this was much better then this.